


The Exorcist

by twistedservice



Series: The Fabled [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Exorcisms, F/F, F/M, Multi, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 17:43:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20451050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedservice/pseuds/twistedservice
Summary: There are fates worse than death.And there are things much, much worse than already being dead.





	The Exorcist

People say things always happen for a reason, but that’s not the case in Cape Elizabeth.

And bad things don’t just happen here, alongside the ocean with a population less than ten thousand. That’s the reason the police force here doesn’t even number twenty full-time officers; there’s no need for that. This isn’t Portland. There aren’t robberies or home invasions, no gunshots fired into the night. And in this type of world, people don’t just go _missing_. There’s an explanation for everything.

They’ve had a lot of fire lately, though. A lot of fire for how much ocean is so close by.

This time he didn’t get to see the fire. Just the ashes in front of him now.

He’s a Police Chief, not a firefighter. The only reason he’s required to be here is because they’re still investigating for bodies, and he needs to be on stand-by if they find anything, the coroner’s office ready to be dialed.

They’ve been picking through the ashes for hours now that it’s been deemed safe to do so. It took less than an hour to burn down to the ground, like it was made to be a tinder box from the second someone started the foundation. The initial explosion seemed to have spurred that even faster than normal; the house never stood a chance.

Someone approaches from behind him, a colleague twenty years younger than him. He’s new, and you can see it in his eyes as he looks over the house. It would be a reaction from anyone unused to seeing such an unusual horror.

He takes the papers offered to him, and flips them through his hands. “Is this all of the information?”

“Yes, sir. We’re almost certain that no one was in the house at the time of the fire. The property was owned by Madeline Vespoli, but the deed was transferred over to the name of her grand-daughter at the time of her death back in June. We traced her back to an address in Portland, but we haven’t been able to contact her.”

“Almost certain?”

“Yes. We’ll keep looking until it’s a certainty.”

That was the issue, with a place like this. There wasn’t another house for miles. The residual smoke lingering in the sky this morning had made it seem like only space was further. He himself had never been out this way. There was no point, when nothing existed except the woods, and the beach. He had all of that right outside his back door, and at least there he had wife and two kids to go with it. To be honest, he wasn’t even entirely sure this road was a factor in their databases. No one patrolled it. No one had ever come up this drive before today, to see what was on the other end.

Even the firetruck parked alongside the house seems dull, the two squad cars further down like they were shades of their real self. Everything here looked off, like the air itself was different than the rest of the world.

It probably was, he surmises. But he had no time to worry about the workings of magic and mystical beings, and what surrounded this place. It was only something if you made it so, and this was nothing at all.

Nothing bad had happened here. Sometimes things just happened, with no rhyme or reason behind them. He had no energy to worry about the _sometimes_.

Sometimes, houses just burned down to the ground.

There was nothing anyone could do about it.

—

—

—Three Days Earlier.

“Are we sure this is a good idea?”

“Are we sure anything we’ve done since we all met has been a _good idea_?”

“I feel like now maybe isn’t a great time to go around pointing this out,” Dimara mutters. “Am I going the right way?”

“I think so,” Nadir says. “It looks a lot different. It was dark when we drove this way.”

“And why did you come this way, exactly?”

Nadir looks at Vance, who looks at Kelsea. When no one speaks up she looks at Blair, who carefully avoids her gaze. Dimara locks eyes with Vance in the rearview mirror.

“Listen to me, shithead, I already know you hurt Kelsea. Everyone in the goddamn van knows that.”

“Well, I wasn’t with them when they came this way, so I don’t know.”

“We needed someone that could heal her,” Nadir explains. “So we found someone.”

“And is this the same guy who we’re hoping is going to be able to solve the Rooke problem?”

Ah yes, the infamous Rooke problem. Or not Rooke problem, depending on how you look at it, but that was too complicated and worrying to think about. The fact of the matter is, not one of them knew a proper course of action for dealing with something like this, and not one of them was really prepared to find them. It was better to find someone else to tell them, and maybe then they could start planning.

“Let’s hope so,” Blair mutters. “If not, I’ve got no fucking clue who we ask next.”

No one does, is the issue. That’s why they’re here. There’s no other reason why the entire group would be willingly turning onto streets that look like they’ve been abandoned for the last ten years, at least. The street itself is terrifying, daunting. All of the trees look a century old, towering above them and leaning ominously over the road, like they’re about to crack in two. The shadows only thicken, the darker the canopy gets. There’s no squirrels scurrying over the abandoned road, no birds perched on top of the cracked telephone poles. Even the foliage has something off about it, something that’s almost but not quite dead.

“You are not telling me someone lives in that house,” Dimara says flatly, at the sight of it. It’s appearance hasn’t changed, since Nadir parked the rental car outside of it weeks ago, now. It still looks wretched, unlived in.

“That’s precisely what I’m telling you,” Nadir answers.

“Creepy,” Celia decides. “Let’s go.”

Dimara doesn’t quite catch her in time; Celia hops out of the car and onto the over-grown front grass, stuffs her hands in her pockets, and makes a straight line right for the front porch.

“Are we… are we letting her go on her own?” Rory asks hesitantly.

“No,” Dimara sighs, and gets out. No one looks particularly quick to follow but that’s the thing, with them. It’s all or nothing.

Almost, anyway. Not one of them can let go of the missing number, the eight that they currently are missing. Even if Kali was here that void wouldn’t be filled. Dimara hadn’t wanted her to come anyway, and Kali hadn’t looked particularly inclined to fight her on it. No one in their right mind would want to do these things, to talk about what they’re going to have to talk about.

If whoever this is agrees to talk to them at all, let alone help.

It doesn’t appear that they’re going to get much choice in the matter though, with how determined Celia looks. It may not be determination at all; it just might be an exhaustion so over-spilled that it’s turned itself back down into adrenaline, longing to be over with. And it’s probably best not to fight her when she’s in that type of mood.

By the time any of them catch up Celia’s cleared all the steps, and opens the front door like she made and controlled the gust of wind that eventually blew it in as it cracked against the back wall. If their pull up to the house hadn’t alerted its occupants, that noise definitely had.

Someone appears at the end of the hallway and only raises a disinterested eyebrow before turning around and continuing on his merry way.

“Hey— Shirin!” Nadir shouts. “We just need to talk to you!”

“No!” he yells back, and the noise of his voice already sounds a mile away, like the house doubles as a maze in its spare time.

“He seems very forthcoming,” Tanis says flatly.

Celia grumbles something under her breath and steps forward, with only one path in mind – going after him. Someone appears in front of her, the physical manifestation of a chill going down your spine, a chill that becomes a person. Celia, much to her credit, doesn’t even flinch. While everyone else looks vaguely alarmed – or more than vaguely, she launches a hand out at the same time the other girl does. Celia’s hand locks around an arm, but what passes around Celia’s arm is nothing but a shadow, dark as ink, curling around tighter and tighter like the coil of a whip.

How she doesn’t react, no one will ever know.

“Alright, hands off,” Blair announces. “Shadows off, what the fuck ever, Isi.”

“I’ll let go when she does,” Celia says flatly.

“Oh, not you,” Isi says, clearly irritated. “Long time no see, fucker.”

“Long time no see, fucker,” he echoes. “Except I recall the last time we met your head wasn’t attached. You liked to hold it and wave it around at people to terrorize them.”

“Surpirse,” Isi says cheerily.

“Oh my god,” Kelsea interrupts. “You’re a Dullahan, right? They always carry their heads.”

“I could have gone my whole life without knowing that,” Rory says quietly.

“We’re like long lost cousins, sweetheart,” Isi says. “One fairy to another.”

“Emphasis on the long lost,” Vance mutters, and Isi levels him with a stare that would almost be enough to freeze their own personal hell over, if the world really does go to shit. The truth can be like that, although the similarities are there. They’re both narrow and fragile looking, but where Kelsea looks soft Isi holds herself as if all her sharp edges were replaced with knives, when she got her head sewn back on. It wouldn’t be the most likely thing to happen.

“So, why the hell are you here? And can you get out?”

“We need to talk to Shirin,” Blair says. “And keep Camden the hell away from me, wherever he is. I can smell him.

Isi grins. “I’ll consider it. What do you need to talk to him about?”

Dimara shoulders her way through the group to the front. There’s two reasons for it, and both are apparent. She’s putting distance between Isi and everyone else, save for Blair, and she’s the voice. No matter how decidedly unimpressed Isi looks at the sudden closeness of their proximity, both of them hold their ground.

“We need help with an exorcism,” she says, no beating around the bush to be found. “Possibly a lot of it.”

Isi doesn’t even take a second to consider that. “He’s a fucking witch doctor, if you want to call it that, not a goddamn encyclopedia. He doesn’t know anything about that.”

Witch doctor is an applicable term, if any. It certainly rounds up everything he’s done, at least the things that they know about. Clearly he was responsible for sewing Isi’s head back on, of all magical things to partake in, and he healed Kelsea. One can only imagine what sort of other things he does in his spare time, in such a ramshackle of a house.

“Great,” Dimara mutters. “That’s awesome. Let’s just go, then.”

“Easy now,” Isi says. “Just because he can’t help you doesn’t mean there isn’t someone who can.”

They all stare at her back in silence, waiting for her to continue. There’s no pushing her; silence may be one of the only things she communicates with and listens to. She stalks away from them, all the way to the other end of the hall, until she’s facing the lone door at the end.

She pops it open. “Hey, pipsqueak! Come out of your fucking hidey-hole.”

Kelsea is the only one that feels even slightly inclined to move, and she rushes forward with a surprising amount of speed, for once unafraid when she leans around Isi to peer down the stairs. She was already expecting the sight that greets her at the bottom of the stairs, even though she hadn’t really seen him before. He’s smaller than she expected, but he matches the shadow of a boy that ran away from her when she woke up alone down there. He hardly leans around to look at them at all, but his eyes are still glowing that unnatural blue.

“Parker, one of eight weirdos,” Isi introduces. “Weirdo, your encyclopedia.”

Kelsea looks up at her. Isi smiles, and it’s just as unnerving as it’s been any of the previous times, like taking a knife right to the heart.

“Go nuts.”

—

—

—

“You sure you’re going to stay up here?” Dimara asks him.

“Yeah,” Vance replies. “Basement’s … nah. I’m good.”

“Don’t go running off.”

“I would never.”

Nadir gives him a dirty look that’s not quite concealed by Blair tugging her down the stairs after pipsqueak Parker, who disappears back through the doorway, not waiting more than a heartbeat for anyone. Kelsea doesn’t look particularly thrilled to be going back down there, and waits until a few people have passed her to follow.

Vance sits down with a thud on the top step, Isi two feet behind him and Dimara two in front. She’s looking at both of them suspiciously, eyes narrowed.

Or maybe just at Isi.

“This place is a nuthouse,” Isi says, like it wasn’t one before they all invaded its walls. “No wonder Early and Zion took off.”

There’s an odd little hissing noise behind him, and the sudden cold disappears. He peers over his shoulder; Isi is gone, and there’s nothing but fast-dissipating black smoke where she had been standing, wisping off towards the ceiling.

Dimara is staring, slack-jawed. Vance lets her for a while before he starts growing concerned, about if her face is frozen or not.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she says in a rush. “Nothing— nope. I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Hear _what_?” he insists, but Dimara takes off down the stairs after everybody else, and doesn’t pause to answer him. She continues muttering under her breath, nonsense phrases and names that mean nothing to him at all. She does cast him one last glance before she closes the door almost all the way, nothing but a sliver left. Not that it does any good. It’s like the basement is soundproof; almost no noise is escaping it, and he doesn’t have any hope of absorbing their conversation.

Or maybe he’s still just not that good at it.

He truly doesn’t know if he’d feel better down there or if it’s wise to stay up here. At least everyone else is down there too. Up here he’s alone, and the house feels like it’s going to collapse on top of him, crush him alive. He may not be able to hear any of their conversation, but he can hear everything else. How the walls are shivering and quaking, far away footsteps and clanking, the rustle of the trees outside. He can still hear the hissing in the back of his mind even though the smoke’s cleared away, like Isi’s ready to pop back in at any moment’s notice.

The footsteps are growing louder, coming towards him at a steady pace, and he has his hands locked around the first step without even realizing. He’s about to flee down the stairs, because at least some form of safety is down there, but doesn’t get the chance. Someone rounds the corner and leans against the wall to look at him. Not Isi, or even Shirin.

Vance can’t make himself get up and flee now. Not directly in front of the guy.

“_Oh_,” the guy says quite obviously, a long minute later. “So you’re the werewolf who hurt the little fairy, are you?”

He blinks in alarm. “Who are you?”

“Does it matter?”

“I think it does?” Vance says, almost dumbly. He feels like someone just pinned him under a microscope and he’s got no hope in hell of escaping the hold on him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he repeats. “It was just a question.”

Vance also asked him a question and wasn’t fortunate enough to get a response, but also doesn’t think he should argue. Who knows if this guy could rip him to shreds while everyone else remains downstairs none the wiser to it.

“So what, you changed?” he asks. “Lost control, hurt one of your friends? How new are you?”

It’s a lot like walking into that first day of college, lost and disoriented, looking at everyone around him and not understanding any of it. It’s a feeling he knew he didn’t miss, and it’s only re-intensified with this guy looking at him.

He stands up, almost nervously. There’s nothing in his body language that’s going to hide how uncomfortable he is with this sudden grilling, and the guy perks up a bit when he finally gets to his feet.

“Don’t get defensive on me.”

“Stop asking me questions, then. I can tell you’re not like me, you don’t know anything about it.”

“I know more than you think, though,” he offers. “We’re more similar than you realize. And if you can’t tell that you’re _definitely _new. What, a few months?”

Vance can’t put his finger on it. He’s not a werewolf, but there’s still something animalistic about him. Just the way he holds himself, the careful slide of his feet as he gets closer like Vance doesn’t notice. It would be hard not to. He notices everything now, whether he wants to or not.

And the worst part is, he can feel something else happening too, and he definitely doesn’t want it. It’s someone else getting closer to him when he doesn’t want them to, when he just wants them to stop talking most of all. His body is reacting quicker than his brain is, and it’s like his blood is boiling. He can feel himself shaking, can feel the heat rising, and he knows it’s only his imagination that’s pulling to mind the acrid tang of a fire, of smoke in the sky, but it almost doesn’t feel like it’s his imagination at all.

“For fuck’s sake,” Blair snaps. “Don’t you have anything better to do than terrorize the innocent, Camden?”

The sudden appearance of Blair is enough to pull him out of it, at least a little bit. Blair puts one hand on Camden and shoves him back, getting in-between them, and he reaches back with the other hand and grabs onto Vance. His hand is freezing, colder than even normal, and that does the rest of the dousing for him. The fire goes out.

“Your heart rate is out of control, calm down.”

“Doesn’t look so innocent to me,” Camden says. Vance puts a hand up to his own chest even though he’s fearful to. It’s a miracle his heart hasn’t broken through it’s skin. He’s not sure how he didn’t feel it before Blair mentioned it.

“Because you’re the pinnacle of innocence,” Blair snorts. “Right. Don’t you have to go pick up some food for yourself at the pet store, or something?”

Blair being between them is the only thing keeping him here like this, but it also could set him off again. Camden’s eyes go a little darker. The bitter tang of ash is heavy at the back of his throat again.

“If you’re going to fight, do it outside!” Shirin yells, and he flinches. Blair’s hand keeps him from taking off and listening, the call of fresh air too impossible to resist. It would be better than being in here, suffocating like he’s trapped underground for real this time.

Camden steps forward, until they’re nearly chest to chest. Vance nearly pulls Blair away.

“You know he’s dangerous. You know that an omega is a volatile creature if they’re left alone for too long.”

“He’s not an omega.”

“A wolf without a pack is just waiting to fall apart,” Camden says lowly. “You don’t think I know that better than you?”

“And who said he doesn’t have one?”

There’s a reason Vance didn’t take off back home, when they carried him out of the woods in the first place. He knew what would happen, if he was truly alone. And he hasn’t been since that moment, not unless it was his own doing.

Camden gets as close as he possibly can, with a shade of a smile. “You—”

“Outside!” Shirin repeats. Vance still can’t tell where he is, and doesn’t care. This time he finally does pull Blair away, back towards the front door, and Blair doesn’t tug himself away. Camden doesn’t follow, and something in Vance is relieved at that. It’s overwhelming how free he feels suddenly, once the roof is no longer over his head. The air is clear, nothing but the trees and the grass and the threat of approaching rain. He inhales deeply, trying to rid everything else from his head, and Blair finally let’s go of him.

He’s not sure how or when he ends up in the grass with his head nearly in-between his knees. Blair stays away for a few moments, lets him recognize his own space until he doesn’t feel quite so much like he’s going to explode at any second, and when he finally sits down next to him with a hand on his back he doesn’t flinch like he’s so sure he would have just a minute ago.

“Thanks.”

“Could tell you were freaking out.”

“You could hear me, but I couldn’t hear you. Am I just that shit at it? Am I ever going to get better at it?”

“Alright, chill,” Blair insists. “You are getting better at it. You already changed and had control over yourself, let the rest of the technicalities come later. I’m still pissed about that, by the way. Couldn’t have waited until I was around to do it, could you?”

He manages to crack a smile, but obviously Blair doesn’t see it. It doesn’t even last that long.

“I still lost it before, though. And if you hadn’t come upstairs—”

“Don’t even. If you’re going around moping about losing it then I’m going to as well.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” Blair asks. “We both go into a state where we can hardly recognize our own surroundings or remember it when we come back out. How is that any different?”

“You lasted _thirty-seven days_. I can hardly last a few hours.”

“And I’m also what, six thousand years older than you?”

“Close enough,” Vance mutters, but at least there’s some humor behind it all. And he knows that Blair is just trying to make him feel better, odd as it would seem to any sort of outside party looking in. It’s still weird to him, but it’s helping. He’s not about to complain.

“I just can’t help but feel like he’s right,” he continues.

“Who, Camden?” Blair says incredulously. “If anything that every comes out of Camden’s mouth is _right _I’ll let one of you cut my head off and be done with everything. Don’t listen to him.”

“But he acts like he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Acts like it, sure. He doesn’t have a pack either.”

“Because he’s not a werewolf.”

“Because three quarters of his is _dead_, or so Isi told me. Close to twenty of them, three or four survivors including him. And once that happened they fell apart. He has no right to talk like he knows. Clearly he’s still out of control, or he wouldn’t look to harass anyone he met. Me and you included.”

Vance wants to ask and also doesn’t. The details of Camden are intriguing, but his brain is also mush right now, his arms still feeling the aftermath of their vicious tremors. He flexes his fingers once, twice. Nothing happens; no claws appear. He feels like he lives in a constant state of in-between, of waiting for them to show up.

“Can I ask you something?” he questions.

“Shoot.”

“I’m bad at this. I get it. But I could _tell _about Dimara and Kali, before I had actual confirmation. I feel like I can tell a lot of things about certain people.”

“Is this going somewhere?”

He steels himself, takes a deep breath. “Does Kelsea feel any different to you?”

Blair looks at him, and Vance waits for him to say something else. Anything that proves Vance wrong. He only looks thoughtful, and the worry could burn a hole in the bottom of his stomach.

“Not bad different,” he says eventually.

“No, not bad. Just different. Ever since I got back, and I found out Nadir took her here… I don’t know. She acts the same, and she looks the same, but something’s off. Something inside her. And maybe it’s nothing, but I had no idea about Rooke either, and it’s freaking me out.”

“None of us had any idea about Rooke,” Blair points out. “But I get it. I don’t think it’s anything like that, though.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I can’t. I just am going to hope Kelsea doesn’t decide to kill me in my sleep one day. No one knows what Shirin did to her, but I don’t think it’s anything inherently bad. I don’t think he purposefully does anything awful, that shit just happens.”

It could’ve _just happened _with Kelsea then, too. Shirin sewed someone’s head back on, at least. God knows what he’s done to Camden with the two of them in the same vicinity. And there have to be others. Dimara seemed to recognize the names that came out of Isi’s mouth earlier, and Vance still feels iffy on Shirin himself. That he definitely doesn’t want to know about. He feels like some things are better left unknown.

“Do you want to know about Rooke, then?” Blair asks, a careful diversion. It’s definitely not a good one, but Vance will take anything he can get. He nods. Good news or bad news, he wants it.

“Good news first, then. Parker said they’re connected. The demon was clearly killable before, able to be injured. Rooke wasn’t, but he could do other things. Disappear at will, go through walls, creepy shit like that. With how long it’s been, all of that merged. So the demon can still make himself disappear, even if he’s not practiced at it, but in Rooke’s body it can still be hurt. Tanis got a hand on him and hurt him. Issue being there’s only one way to properly kill the things – angel blades.”

“Well Dimara’s got tons of those.”

“Quiet, I wasn’t finished. If we just go after it in Rooke’s body with an angel blade, there might not be any getting Rooke back. That thing will effectively poof inside Rooke’s body, and he could just shut down. Or disappear for good. We don’t actually _know_. So we have to get it out of him. What’s left of it, the spirit. Chances are we won’t be able to kill it once it’s out of him, because it’ll take off, but chances also are that it’ll fuck off very far away from us once we do.”

“He can _disappear_,” Vance points out. “How do we even hold onto him long enough to get it out?”

“That’s the bad news. Tanis can probably do it with a heavy side of magic, but the only way to actually distract it long enough is to give it something else to focus on. An injury might help, but we need direct inside help.”

“You mean Rooke.”

“Unfortunately. And the only possible way we’re getting any fight out of him while that thing’s inside him is some sort of trauma. An emotional shock, Parker said. Something, _anything _that will be big enough to trigger Rooke into fighting back against it.”

Vance knows it had to be more difficult than it sounds. He doesn’t even want to do it. He’s sure no one does, but they don’t have a choice. This is Rooke they’re talking about, here. They don’t just go from nine to eight. That’s not how it works.

“Do you want the really bad news?”

“There’s more?” he asks weakly.

“There’s always more. We have an idea.”

Vance can only stare at the grass for so long. He can feel Blair staring at the side of his head, and waits for him to say something else. An idea is just that, an idea. With no information Vance isn’t sure how he’s supposed to feel, not when his head is still on the verge of reeling.

He keeps waiting. Blair doesn’t say a word. Of all the things Vance waits for a smile, for a quirk of the lips that would assure him he’s just being dramatic in assuming the worst.

But Blair doesn’t smile.

That can only mean one thing.

They’re well and truly fucked with this, aren’t they?

“I’m gonna go make sure no one’s killed anyone,” Blair says, and stands up. “You good out here?”

“I’m good. Thanks.”

Blair nods, and takes back off for the house. Vance watches him go. He still looks off himself. More tense than before. Not jumpy, because he doesn’t think that word really applies to Blair, but more watchful. Careful. Definitely not something he thought Blair ever would be.

“Are you okay?” he calls after him. He’s sure Nadir has asked him that a dozen times, but the words haven’t come out of Vance’s mouth since Blair got back. He’s not sure that anyone else has asked, either, and suddenly the desire is too overwhelming.

“Does it matter?” Blair shouts over his shoulder, without turning around. He should tell him that it does, that it always will, but Blair seems to speed up and is gone within seconds. The house takes him back in like the darkness.

It matters. It really, really matters.

“No one’s ever fine,” the voice says, and Vance doesn’t jump. He’s accepted that he’s truly batshit insane, and that someone should probably commit him. The voice hasn’t gone away. At this point he doesn’t think it ever will.

“Shut up,” he sighs, and flops back into the grass.

—

—

—

“What is this placed called?” Rory asks. “Love’s?”

“Lowe’s, imbecile,” Dimara replies.

“_Love’s_,” Tanis snickers, and Rory will accept her laughing at his own unawareness if it means she’s laughing at all. She looks better, but that’s relative. No one really knows what’s going on inside with her. Just because her injuries have healed and she’s walking and talking again doesn’t mean anything, when they can’t see what’s inside. Blair may be able to understand that better than any of them, if he could remember half of his time down there in the first place. Until they get Rooke back, he doesn’t think there’s going to be much talking at all.

“Why are we here again?”

“Making it look realistic,” Dimara says, and then dumps two containers of kerosene into the cart that Tanis is pushing around.

“It has to look realistic?”

She gives him a look, and he decides to shut his mouth. He’ll just walk alongside everyone else and let Dimara pick up things that they really don’t need, but apparently do. If anything this is just a distraction before the real thing.

Celia comes up behind him and slips her hand into his. He doesn’t know how, or even why, but Tanis turns around at nearly the same time, eyeing them both. She glances down at their joined hands without missing a beat.

“How long has that been going on?” she asks, and Celia reaches forward to kick her.

“How long has what been going on?” Dimara echoes, and he presses his lips together. It takes her a few seconds in which no one responds, before she finally turns around. She lasers in on it just as fast as Tanis did, and shakes her head.

“Shut up,” Celia snaps.

“Didn’t say anything. You guys are cute.”

“What’s cute?” Vance asks, and Rory sighs. He rounds the corner with Kelsea, Blair and Nadir just behind them, and he tightens his hand around Celia’s to keep her from tugging free of his grip to go sprinting down the aisle away from them.

“Celia and Rory.”

“Oh, obviously.”

_Obviously_. Was there ever any subtlety to them ever, then? It doesn’t appear that way. No one really looks surprised. Just resigned to the fact. Expectant.

“Lame,” Blair says flatly.

“You are _literally_,” Celia insists, cutting her sentence short there, waving her free arm at his and Nadir’s joined hands. Blair doesn’t really seem to care, no surprise there, and Nadir shrugs. He doesn’t let go. He doesn’t want to let go, and can understand that for all Blair talks like it’s bad, why he doesn’t let go either. There’s safety there, a certainty, a comfort in Celia’s hand around his.

“Alright, let’s go,” Dimara urges, herding them all towards the checkout. “We have to meet Kali and show her where she’s going.”

“Yippee,” Blair deadpans. He’s definitely not making it a secret, about his open distrust towards Kali. No one really is. Clearly Dimara trusts her, along with a lot of other things, and Rory doesn’t have a reason _not _to like her, but they’re all stuck with different images. Tanis and Nadir with the hunters that almost killed them both, Blair with the ones that chained and starved him a basement.

And him with the ones that dragged everyone he knew up the beach to slaughter them, like they were nothing.

He’s not really excited, either.

For more reasons than one.

—

—

—

Dimara cracks the door open, and expects Rooke to appear from the walls, like mist over the meadow.

Not the thing that’s inside him, not the shade of Rooke. The _actual _Rooke, and his normal voice, and the familiar way he moves, deathly silent, colder than ice. The house is cold, sure, but there’s no sign of him.

“Hello?” Blair shouts, over her shoulder, and ruins the illusion.

The demon knows their house. Crawled over every inch of it and tainted it, chased them out of it. Returning to it now feels so wrong, and everyone else is clearly thinking the same way. No one looks particularly eager to take more than a few steps inside, and even the sun beating down isn’t doing much to permeate the growing darkness of the hallway and all the dust floating through the air. It feels just as inhabited as it did when she first stepped inside it.

Worse, now.

Tanis is the first one to make a move, taking half their bags of purchases into the kitchen with her. It really is just to make it look good, in case someone goes poking a little too deep. They don’t need to do as much damage as it looks like they’re planning for.

Kali is still standing on the porch, looking over the meadow and the woods. She takes a step forward when Dimara offers a hand, stepping into the house with a wary look. Dimara can remember feeling that way; confused and unsure of exactly what she was stepping into, but there was the same level of wonder as well.

“It almost feels like a different world, out here,” Kali murmurs, and she understands it perfectly. Out here with nothing else in sight it feels like they could be a million miles away from everything. If only that was the case. If only they really were safe.

With their absence extending longer than even they thought, it’s like this place has returned to it’s original state. Even everything outside looks wilder; the grass longer, the trees taller and more foreboding. Kelsea still disappears into them like a whisp of smoke, like she was never there at all. It won’t take long, for her to get back.

“You really love it here, hey?” Kali asks, and squeezes her hand. Dimara knows it must be stupid, to feel her eyes burn even the slightest bit, but she really does. This is her life, all of it, and she wants it to still be that way.

She wants to go back to the before.

“Yeah,” she responds, voice thick. “Yeah, I’m gonna miss it.”

—

—

—

Blair feels ridiculous, calling his own number the next morning, but doesn’t have a choice.

He prepares himself for the line to click, for the almost immediate intake of breath on the other side, gearing themselves up—

“No,” he interrupts. “Don’t say anything. You’re going to listen to _me_.”

—

—

—

Tanis leans forward on the dashboard, resisting the urge to fall asleep. “Do you really think he’s going to show up?”

Blair has been fiddling with the wheel for ages, now, even if the car has been firmly in park for nearly ten minutes. It doesn’t look like even vampire strength is proving very helpful with rotating it.

He leans back in his seat, and rubs a hand over his eyes. “Do you?”

Tanis doesn’t know what the hell to think, at this point. She doesn’t think Blair does either. She knows she should want him to show up, but doesn’t. Looking him in the eyes was hard enough all those times before. She’s not sure she can do it again.

“You can stay here,” he offers.

“No.”

“I know you don’t wanna do it.”

“No,” she repeats, bitterly. “But I’m going to.”

It feels kind of fitting, anyway. The three of them. It all seemed like things were going so well for the three of them, until it didn’t. She can remember it as the before and as the after, and the moment everything changed when the car went off the side of the road.

A train goes blaring by on the tracks a hundred yards in front of them. The gates have been down for a full minute, flashing red, but she still jumps at the sudden thundering all the way through the ground, making the car shudder.

“Sucks, being jumpy,” Blair says quietly. She hardly hears him over the train. “Our brains are just fucked now.”

If that isn’t the understatement of the past month, then nothing will be. At least Blair has the fortune to be able to hide it better; she’s not fooling anyone, with how screwed up her brain is now. It’s gone through too much, and she doesn’t think anyone else could handle the level of shit it’s been forced to deal with either.

Blair’s not really handling it either, she doesn’t think. Just hiding it better. He’s not jumpy, really, just on edge, and while no one outside of their little circle would notice it she knows they all do. He’s worried. Nervous. Never really feeling safe. That’s probably why it’s truly appropriate, that it’s the three of them.

Or at least it will be, hopefully.

The train finally hits its end, a rapid blur that disappears into the trees, and there’s a car parked on the other side of the tracks. It’s hard to see at first, with the harsh glare of the sunlight, but she doesn’t need to see to know who it is.

“I’m sorry,” Blair says.

“For what?”

“For adding to the already unnecessary amount of trauma that was going on.”

“Do you really think that’s what happened?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think, ‘cause I know I nearly killed you.”

“But you didn’t,” she says, and takes a deep breath. Rooke gets out of the car on the other side of the tracks and she exhales. It’s like the train’s come back; everything shakes around her, for a brief second.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats.

“I know,” she insists. “But believe me – you're not what I think about when I go back to that time.”

Really, she doesn’t think of Blair at all. He’s not even at the forefront of her mind, when she begins to list off the things that were truly awful down there. In fact, and she’s sure of it, if Blair wasn’t down there with her she would have driven herself insane even faster than he did. She couldn’t have been down there that long on her own, not with only Rooke and his hunters for company.

“You sure you want me to stay here?” he asks. Whether he accepted her answer or not, she’s not entirely sure.

“Positive.”

They both get out of the car regardless. A little bit of unification can go a long way right now, when she knows how alone she’s going to feel in just a minute.

“No matter what he says, don’t listen to him,” Blair says, and she nods. Anything that comes out of his mouth will be a load of nothing, and she doesn’t plan on listening to it for longer than she has to. Just get over there and do it. Stand it for as long as she can. Blair will be listening the whole time, anyway.

She doesn’t feel unsafe with him, like Blair may think. She feels safer with him than she does most people.

That’s why leaving him behind at the car while she starts walking down the road is one of the most terrifying things she’s ever done. Sure, Blair could run to her in two seconds flat, but she’s not scared of what Rooke is going to do. She just doesn’t want to be near him at all, not under any circumstances. She doesn’t want to look him in the eyes, doesn’t want to be within arm’s reach, and now she doesn’t have a choice.

It’s hard to remember that she volunteered for this, that everyone else offered to come instead of either her or Blair.

Their pig-headedness was to blame for this one, no doubt about it. The three of them had started this together – it only felt fitting to end it that way too.

If they can end it at all.

“Well, long time no see,” he calls, still from a distance. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

_It’s not him_, she reminds herself. It looks like him and sounds like him but it’s not, and he’s going to use that against her the way he’s been using it against them all.

She can’t think up a good response, not one that’s going to match up to his level of dramatics. She focuses on her feet underneath her, the straight line she’s arcing directly towards him. Another few seconds and she won’t have any further to go. He’s stopped around the front of the car, arms crossed over his chest, watching her.

She wasn’t sure it was possible, but he looks even more ghostly now. Like a mirage in the center of the road in the middle of summer, like if she spun around he’d be gone before she could look again.

She can only hope that’s really the case.

“Come to say goodbye?” he asks.

“Something like that.”

Tanis stops five feet in front of him. He told them to get out of here days ago, to flee while they still had their lives. She’s almost shocked he’s not angry; his face is just very blank, a clean canvas. He doesn’t even look amused as he meets her eyes, which is the most shocking thing of all. After what she had experienced of the demon for so many days she was convinced it only did things for its own personal joy and satisfaction.

But it’s almost terrible that he doesn’t look that way, because in its place he looks more like Rooke.

“It appears you’ve got a bodyguard lurking in the background,” he says. “That’s not discouraging at all.”

“You’ve got friends too.”

“Well of course. Doesn’t everyone?”

There’s a fundamental difference to her friends and to the ones of a demon. Hers are protecting her, by her side no matter what, and she’s not sure demons work the same way. He’s still alone – abandoned the hunters when things went south and Blair went to town on them. Apparently the risk was too great, to stick around.

“Do you really think we should leave?” she asks softly, genuine curiosity taking over. “Do you really think that’s best for us?”

“From the _goodness _of my own heart, the next time one of us gets our hands on one of you – not everyone’s coming out alive. From what I’ve experienced your self-preservation instincts aren’t the greatest. Consider it a warning, a sign of good faith. I thought you escaped me once; maybe they deserve another chance at life. But only one.”

“You’re right, that’s very generous of you,” she agrees. “But why do you care?”

“Oh, I don’t. But I think _he _would want me to give you guys a shot.”

“Think, or know?” she questions, dreading the answer. She thinks back to the thought of Rooke trapped inside his own body, screaming for escape. Only able to hope that someone would one day notice.

“Think,” he decides finally. “Haven’t heard from him in a while.”

She could go over right then. Sink to her knees in the middle of the road and just wait for something to finish her off; him or otherwise. That would be easiest, than really thinking about what he just said. If what Parker said is true, then there might be no getting Rooke back. They could get the demon out and have nothing in return.

But she knows Blair was only speaking the truth. Everything he says is just a ploy to mess with her, nothing more.

He takes a step forward, and she digs her feet into the pavement and holds her ground. She waits to be like Vance, for her fingernails to break through the skin of her palms, and Rooke looks down at them with a raised eyebrow.

“Let’s keep the hands where they are, hey?”

“What, don’t want a repeat of last time?” she asks.

He smirks, huffing out a little laugh that nearly makes her heart constrict. “You know, I like you Tanis. Or maybe it’s just him that likes you, I guess I can’t really tell anymore. But you’re hard to break. Or at least you were.”

She’s not sure what it is about that, that finally sets her off. Maybe it’s the impending speech she can sense about to come spilling out of his mouth. Once that happens she has no hope of stopping it, and she doesn’t want to hear a single word.

She reaches forward and grabs him around the wrist, just like last time, but doesn’t do anything. He almost goes to rip himself away, she can _feel _it, but stops. He’s not in any pain, not being dealt anything he can’t deal with it. It would take nothing for her to go through with it, but she needs a lot more than that to get anywhere.

“You know who I think is breakable?”

He smiles again. “Do tell.”

He doesn’t have any leverage to pull away from her, not when he catches the glint of sunlight against the blade of the knife she pulls out of her jeans.

And he can’t get away fast enough, when she plunges it into his gut.

There’s no other way to describe the noise that comes out of his mouth as anything other than purely Rooke. It’s just one little sound: shocked, pained, a ragged little gasp like she did nothing more than punch him. But the pain passes across his face like a tidal wave, and her fingers only tighten around the hilt in response.

His arm sags out of her grip, but comes back up with a renewed intensity, scrabbling back for her arm. She doesn’t hear him come up but Blair rips Rooke out of her grip, and replaces her hands with his own. She takes a step back, watches him put one hand around the knife, twisting it in even deeper, and that finally earns a yell. Blair shoves him up against the front of the car, doubling the pressure against his stomach, and she finally winces at the scream, at how piercing it is.

She blinks, if only to get rid of the image, and when she opens her eyes Rooke is staring right at her, limp in Blair’s hands. “Tanis. Tanis, please, he’s hurting me—”

“Let’s not try the faking bullshit,” Blair insists. “Wouldn’t waste your breath.”

“Blair, I swear,” he pleads, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “It’s—”

“Not Rooke, I get it,” Blair fires back. “Nice try.”

That doesn’t make it hurt any less, how easily he can make it look like it’s really Rooke. That’s how he slipped so easily through them, melding in like he was always there. She can tell the difference, now, but what good does it do?

He starts struggling again, wiggling like a fish on a hook, but doesn’t gain an inch. Blair is still holding onto the knife like it’s his new favorite thing, their regular old butcher knife courtesy of Lowe’s. Who would’ve known.

“I think you’re enjoying this a little too much,” Rooke pants, still pushing against the hood of the car. Blair could hold him there all day and not even break a sweat.

“You’re absolutely correct,” Blair tells him.

“That’s not your brightest move,” he insists. “You never went back for that necklace, you know. It’s a shame, because they would have held it until you came back if someone _else _hadn’t gone and picked it up for you. Don’t you want it back?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Blair snaps. “Shut the fuck up if you want your life to last a few extra seconds. Go get the rope.”

Tanis knows he’s talking to her, but it takes a few long seconds until she’s able to turn around and head back to the car. Even then she can’t help but glance over her shoulder, watching the two of them. He’s not even bleeding, like a well that dried up at the bottom long ago, but they’re hurting him all the same. Holding him in one place.

“You know, Tanis?” Rooke yells after her. “I think I can finally hear him again. You know why? ‘Cause you’ve hurt him so bad. He’s never been in this type of pain before, and that’s on you. This is all on you.”

She knew that, already. And she also knows it’s a lie, because regardless of the details she’s seen the look in Rooke’s eyes, the real Rooke, and how blank they go sometimes. She’s spent hours looking at the bruises around his neck and staring at the front door of the house they just burnt to the ground and wondering why he didn’t just disappear for good, after experiencing that much pain.

And now this. Who knows what part of Rooke will even want to stay, if they fix this.

Little does this demon know, too, that this was the plan. That he can’t break her anymore, that he never could.

She turns around, one last time. “Good.”

—

—

—

That next car ride is the experience of Blair’s life.

He doesn’t trust the bastard in the trunk by himself, not when there’s still a chance that he could wiggle the knife out somehow and disappear, so he winds up crammed into the footwell of the backseat with half of Blair’s weight on top of him, firmly stuck there.

He makes Tanis drive, while he sits there, and watches her valiant attempt at ignoring all of the muffled noises coming from the backseat.

The duct tape wound up being more useful than he thought.

He can tell even from a distance that the cops and firefighters have wandered off, possibly for good. There’s no sense in guarding a house burnt down to the ground if there was nothing to be found inside of the ashes. They had completed their search, it appeared, and nothing remained of their presence at all except for the yellow caution tape fluttering up the drive, caught in the breeze.

For someone who’s seen a lot of horrific sights, this is definitely up there. Even the meadow around the house is blackened from the ash, a wide circle burnt around the entire perimeter. There’s no birdsong, no creatures rustling through the grass. Everything has fled the area, except for the three of them. Two because they know exactly what they have to do, and one because he doesn’t have a choice.

Tanis stops the car halfway up the drive and gets out. Blair pops his own door open and the scent of the smoke hits him like a wall, even several days past. Even the air itself seems gray, like someone’s put a filter over it. It stings his eyes as soon as he steps out of the car.

He reaches back in, of course, hand grabbing at where Rooke’s are joined behind his back, rope scratching against his skin. He’s stopped wiggling, finally, but it appears he’s still trying to get something out, even if not a single word is clear. He shuts up when Blair drags him out of the car and drops him face-first onto the pavement. The only thing that escapes him then is a rather loud, obvious noise of pain as the knife in his gut digs in deeper, twisting further through his insides. All the more closer to where the spirit resides, and that alone is enough to make it worth it. That and the words from before, about the necklace. The slimy little bastard probably has it tucked away somewhere. It really thought of everything here.

Tanis did her part – that much is clear, and she’s going to have to save the rest of what she’s got for later. Blair crouches down next to him and grabs his hands once again, yanking until he’s balanced precariously on his knees, swaying back and forth like the wind has him.

Blair waits, not so patiently, for him to do something. For him to turn around and look him in the eyes with all the gravel stuck in the line of his jaw, for him to lunge away into the grass, or towards Tanis. Anything to possibly get some leverage.

He looks up, and stops.

Blair feels it, even just through his hands. Everything locks so tight in his body that Blair has no doubt in his mind that something, anything, just happened. He can’t see Rooke’s face, won’t dare let go of him, but he can imagine the look in his eyes as he takes in the house. Or the opposite of it, really. The burned down wreckage of it, what’s left twisted together into one melted pile in the middle of the meadow. It’s a harsh, garish sight in the middle of what used to be such serenity, and every once in a while the breeze will stir gently at some of the cinders, scattering them to the sky.

It would be a shock to anyone, such ruin. But to someone who was born there, grew up there, spent seventy-two years stuck inside it’s walls…

“Something’s happening,” Tanis says, and Rooke finally lunges away from him, so fast that Blair finally recognizes the inhumanity of what’s taken control of his body.

He doesn’t get anywhere, but Blair’s not sure he was trying. Instead of trying to get away it’s almost like he was trying to avoid the sight of it, throwing himself to the ground to get as far away from the image as they’d let him.

Like Blair’s going to let him.

He drags him back up, harsher than before, and this time grabs him around the jaw, forcing his eyes ahead. It’s like something’s holding his eyes open, like he can’t close them, and Blair doesn’t want to be stupid enough to hope, but he might just be.

He rips the tape off his mouth, and Rooke doesn’t make a sound. His mouth is parted slightly, trembling, and Blair makes sure to lean in closer.

“Want to tell me what’s going on in that head of yours?”

Nothing. He’s got no quip for that, no ounce of sarcasm left in his body. There’s something else driving back against it now, something keeping it from coming out.

Someone.

They hadn’t really wanted to do this, not one of them. But it had seemed like one of the only ways that didn’t end up with someone else dead.

“Rooke,” Tanis says slowly, crouching down before him. She still keeps her distance, even if there isn’t really any danger.

“You think it’s working?”

“I think so. I can feel a difference.”

A difference is all they could have hoped for. To think they could’ve done all of this, what’s laid out before them now, for nothing. Wouldn’t that have been the nail in the coffin for all of this. No Rooke, no home; what else could’ve been thrown at them, after that?

“Rooke,” she repeats. “I know you’re in there. I know you can hear me. We can fix this. Believe me, if nothing else. We can fix this. Just fight back against it, for as long as you can. Let us fix it.”

He starts struggling again, right on cue, and Blair tightens his grip. He starts screaming – a piercing, reedy wail that sounds less human that’s anything else that’s come out of his mouth. It doesn’t stop, either. Just continues on and on and on, like he’s not sure how to make it stop, and Blair can’t tell anymore who the scream’s coming from, Rooke or the demon.

“I’ll apologize for this later,” he mutters, and rises to his feet. He takes him by the shoulders and jerks him towards the side of the car; his head cracks into the door so hard there’s an indentation left behind in it, and he slides limp to the ground at Blair’s feet.

“Well, that’s one way to shut him up,” Tanis says, looking down at him. She must be taking a page out of his book, in the emotionless department. If she’s hurt by the image of him lying unconscious between them, she’s not showing it.

“Call Celia,” he tells her, and she nods.

This time, the bastard’s going in the trunk, because Blair has to drive. He has to go get the others where they’re safely waiting, and Celia and Rory have to come get Tanis. That’s the trouble of inevitably having to split up.

All he has to do is drive. Tanis has to get ready, and get ready fast. They don’t have much time for this.

In fact, they probably have less time than even they know.

—

—

—

Celia has learned to relish the darkness.

She has very little choice in the matter, when they can’t turn the lights on in a place they’ve broken into. A church full of darkness seems like a metaphor for something she knows all too much about, these days.

It’s supposed to help. A place of spirituality and healing, one that a demon would turn tail and run from at first sight. Any help they can get, they’ll take. For all they know, they’ll really wind up needing it.

All of Tanis’ mutterings were getting to her, things that she knows are definitely not in English, things that aren’t in any widely-spoken human language. That’s something that’s long-dead, a language for the covens that only they know how to speak. She doesn’t want to know where she got that knowledge from, because she doesn’t have the guts to ask. Knowing Tanis’ exorcism skills are coming from the internet isn’t going to comfort her any.

And surprisingly, Rory seems pretty content to help her. When she asks he reads things off from the book she brought with her, or he’ll correct her pronunciation like he really knows any better. For the most part he lets Tanis pace circles around him until he eventually reaches a hand up to stop her. He’s keeping her on the right track.

Celia’s never been good at supervising, anyway.

The church is small enough – she can hear them no matter what corner she wanders to, so it doesn’t matter much. She finds herself sitting alone in the front few, staring at the altar and all the things painted on the walls beyond it. It’s hard to make out, with the lack of light, but she finds comfort even in the blur of wings regardless, of the flight just out of her reach.

She feels weird, pulling out an angel blade to tap along her fingertips, but that’s comforting too. Just in a very different way.

Rory ends up beside her several long minutes later, sitting down without a word or a sound. She glances over her shoulder. Tanis is still talking to herself, book in one hand, phone in the other.

“She’s doing good,” Rory murmurs. “Just going over everything.”

She better be doing good, or they're going to have a problem on their hands. No one else can do this but her; no one has the capabilities, or the magic. Even Parker said that the chances they would find someone with experiencing willing to exorcise something that's already dead is slim to none. Tanis is basically their only option. And Celia has faith in her, there's no doubt about it, but she can't help but wonder if it's too close to home.

Then again, Tanis did apparently go through with stabbing him earlier. She's sure she wan't the only one who thought that maybe Blair would have to step in and do it. Celia would have gladly stepped in to do it herself, if someone had let her go. But Blair's volatile anger was probably enough for that particular situation, and no one had to tell her that. Besides, she's sure Rory was plenty happy she stayed with him and didn't get anywhere near the situation. Rory still doesn't want to be anywhere near it, by the looks of him right now.

They don't have a choice, though. Even Kali argued against coming, although she doesn't think Dimara wound up telling her where they were going to do it, so there goes that scenario.

She's gotta give Kali some credit, though. Anyone having recently met them who would still want to be around for something like this must be a goddamn saint.

"Do you feel better in here?" Rory asks, out of the blue. "I don't know, more connected? You know how I do when I'm closer to the ocean?"

"Sort of?" she guesses. "I don't know either, it's weird. I just feel... at peace here, I guess. I don't feel like I have to worry about anything, even though we know what's coming to us."

"I'm glad," Rory says. "Creeps me the hell out, but I'm glad."

"Everything creeps you out."

He smiles. "Not everything. I like the ocean, thank you very much."

"No, really?" she asks incredulously. "I'd never have guessed."

He elbows her gently in the side so she does it back, if only to distract herself from the impending shitshow they have coming their way. Tanis has quieted down, now, like she can sense it too. Celia glances back again and watches her trace her finger all the way down her current page, mouthing every sentence as her finger travels. They don't have any more time to prepare for this; either they do it now, or they risk losing Rooke for good.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket and shatters the little moment of peace she had found in her own head. She almost doesn't go to pull it out, but Rory stares until she does so, abhorring the feeling of it in her hands. If there's anything that can ruin a mood like that, it's the damn phone that's been forced on her.

It's only one, from Dimara. _We're not gonna make it._

The peace evaporates fully into thin air, and it's like the room's temperature drops. No one else reacts, so she must be imagining it, but she has no other way to describe it. All the hair on the back of her neck stands up.

She waits for something else, anything, but Dimara's number never reappears. She sends her a string of question marks that manage to look more frantic than anything else would, because she's not capable of a real question.

A second later, from Kelsea: _you need to come to the shipyards._

The shipyards. Those aren't far from here, as long as Celia's thinking about the right thing. Maybe a ten minute drive, at the very most. It would be on the way here.

Rory's trying to glance over her arm, clearly wondering about her silence. She turns the screen off with a flick of a button, but not before she sees the last text roll in, just before she stands up.

_Now._

—

—

—

Kelsea wants to pretend that the noises she starts hearing from the back of the car - the trunk in particular - are all a figment of her imagination.

That's not a realistic thing to hope for, when you're stuffed into a car with a vampire and a werewolf, among other things. Vance hears it first, mostly because Blair's focused on driving and keeping them as inconspicuous as they can be, and when she starts hearing the noise, something to be described as only a thumping, she pretends they're hitting potholes. Very large, rhythmic potholes. Every single one of them that exists in the city of Portland.

But that's evidently not what's happening. Vance turns around, about a minute later, and eyes what of the trunk he can see from the backseat. After that he stares at Blair long enough that Blair finally turns around, only for Dimara to practically yank the wheel out of his hands when his attention fades from the road.

"Well, someone's awake," Blair deadpans, and she wishes she could tuck and roll out of the car into the biggest pothole in the country. Anything to hide from what she's inevitably going to be witnessing, not long from now.

She's still not even sure what they're doing. It's all on Tanis, and they're just unfortunate bystanders.

The noise keeps getting louder, though. So loud that it sounds like someone's throwing rocks at the car the further along they drive. They're getting faster, too. More frantic.

There's finally one that's so loud that she turns around to look, and there's a little dent pointing outwards out of the trunk.

"Uh," she says, failing to get anything else out.

"Someone's awake, and someone wants out," Nadir guesses wisely. Rooke's no stronger than a normal human, probably weaker even on a good way. That's all the demon strength at work there, struggling to get out. Or maybe it's the two of them fighting against each other in one body in such a small space that's causing so much damage.

There's another kick, or punch, and there's an even larger dent in the trunk. Dimara is starting to look exasperated, at the state of her car or the situation. Kelsea's not sure which one is taking priority right now, and nearly takes up all the remaining air in the car when the noises finally subside. She can picture him sagging to the floor of the trunk, exhausted but not bleeding, struggling to figure a way out of this. And both of them are doing just that, she figures. Looking for a solution.

She's not at all prepared for a noise so loud it's like thunder cracks an inch away from her ears, and she yelps.

"Oh shit," Vance says, alarmed. "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit—"

The car is still moving, but swerves. Vance throws the door open and does exactly what she was imagining would be the better option and all but throws himself into the road without a care in the world. The car slams to a stop, and she nearly goes careening into the front seat.

Blair launches himself out of the car at a breakneck speed, and Kelsea finally gets the good sense to turn. Vance is on his feet, but only for a second. The trunk is _open_, of all things, metal pieces still tinkering down onto the road, and Rooke only gets one foot out of it before Vance is on him, tackling him to the ground. Blair's there a second later, so she's not particularly concerned about him getting away, but it's the whole open trunk thing that's worrying. He just broke out of the car with his hands tied behind his back, like they had surrounded him by paper.

She loses sight of them, struggling behind the car. Nadir's already out, and Dimara's on her way with her phone in one hand.

Kelsea doesn't want to get out, but does anyway.

Clearly this demon has strength that even they weren't aware of, but with Blair and Vance together it doesn't stand much of a chance. They're both mostly on top of him, pinning him down to the road. Even his wiggling isn't doing much good, other than creating more road rash for everyone involved.

"I think he cracked one of my fucking ribs," Vance pants, tightening his grips on his legs.

"Did you consider you did that jumping out of a moving vehicle?" Blair asks.

"That's also a possibility," he agrees. Dimara crouches down by his side, taking some of Rooke's weight away from him. Getting him to ease up, just a little bit.

"Don't hurt yourself," she says, and Kelsea feels a lot better with the knowledge that unless he disappears, he's definitely stuck under them. "Kelsea, text them right now. Tell them to get over here. Clearly we're not making it to them."

Yeah, clearly, and she's the most useless one here by the looks of it. Nadir at least could want a piece of the thing that killed her a few months ago; Kelsea really has a negative desire to touch him or even be near him, especially in this state. He's still got a knife sticking out of him, still has that awful, sneering look on his face.

She fires off two texts and doesn't bother to see if she gets a response. Celia better get the message, literally and figuratively, and get Tanis over here before he decides to pull something else.

"Alright, we're not doing this here," Dimara says. "Get the car off the road, we're going closer to the docks. Hopefully no one fucking sees us."

There's no way anyone's going to see them in there, concealed by the looming shadows of the ships drifting slightly with the current. Even from here they look imposing, and judging by the feeling she gets up her spine looking up them, not many people have a desire to go wandering around through them by the light of the moon.

There's a lot of things she doesn't want to do here, but she takes it upon herself to be the first to head off the road closer to the ships, to where the darkness of the docks meets the inky blue of the ocean. She can hear the sounds of struggle still behind her and would rather not focus on them. They can handle dragging Rooke this way, and she's not going to be of any help.

This, of all things, almost feels fitting. It's eerie here. Down by the shipyards there's no signs of traffic, and even the brightest parts of the city are obscured by the buildings around them, practically plunging them into another world. There's nothing here watching them, no one to protect them. Not even from one of their own.

Nadir runs up beside her, and even the noise of someone else's feet hitting the ground could be enough to set her off, during a moment like this. Nadir raises her hand and trapped inside the cusp of her fingers is a wavering little flame, brushing against her skin almost gently. While it does nothing to penetrate the true darkness around them it lights everything up around them, a small circle that at least seems warmer than everything else far off in the distance.

"Better?" she asks, and Kelsea nods. She looks off behind her, feeling better with Nadir by her side. Nadir who's already taken care of her once, saved her life when she wouldn't have been able to do it on her own.

They're already far off in the distance, but it appears they're succeeding in dragging Rooke this way, down the hill. Closer to them, if Kelsea doesn't pick up the pace.

"Don't focus on them, they've got it," Nadir says. "Just find us a good spot to get this over with."

Kelsea already knows where she's headed, though. Further down the docks there's a section where no ship has been left overnight, a break in the line allowing moonlight to wash over the salt-beaten boards, slightly damp from the spray. A spot where the darkness doesn't seem like it's going to win. Everyone knows how badly they need it right now.

It seems like the most perfect thing to find, in a world of otherwise imperfect things.

At least Kelsea is starting to accept it, these days.

—

—

—

Nadir wishes that fire would be of any use right now.

But it’s not, the same way it really didn’t do any good when she killed the thing in the first place. The fire just released it, set it on Rooke, and now they’re here. Tanis may think it’s her fault, but this is on Nadir too, and there’s no convincing her otherwise.

She watches them pull Rooke closer and closer. His feet are scraping frantically along the pavement, the only leverage he has left, and even that’s not getting him anywhere. She’s not surprised, but it still hurts to see him struggling in such a way against the only people who have ever stood up to help and protect him.

And she knows it’s not him, they all do, but Rooke’s in there somewhere. They have proof, after what Blair and Tanis saw earlier. They still have hope.

She has to really hope that for Rooke’s sake.

“Are we leaving the knife in?” she asks, as soon as they’re close enough to process the question. It looks painful, and she wants to feel bad, but she also remembers exactly what that thing did to her, the burning agony in her torso before she succumbed to it. She can’t imagine Rooke’s very happy about it either, but he must be able to recognize the amount of good it’s doing. She hopes, anyway, that he doesn’t hate them for this.

“Gonna let Tanis decide,” Blair mutters, and his head turns back to the road. That’s about as good a warning as they’re going to get, to Tanis’ actual arrival.

So it’s a do or die, now or never type of thing.

He doesn’t really seem to deflate at the sight of Tanis, nor does he show any signs that his struggle is about to cease. She almost wishes someone had thought to put some more duct tape over his mouth, because he seems slightly amused. Almost like he’s wondering what amount of stupidity let them to this point, this conclusion.

Nadir is still kind of wondering that herself, but it’s like Parker said. They really have no other option.

“Do you really think this ends if you get rid of me?” he asks. “C’mon, you can’t be _that _naïve.”

“Do you talk more when you’re uneasy?” Blair asks. “It seems that way to me.”

Tanis deposits a book in her hands, and Nadir recognizes the sight of it, but the title still isn’t in any sort of language that she recognizes. She pockets her phone as well, and when she finishes fiddling with her hands she looks like she’s standing as tall as she can make herself, shoulders squared. Despite the awful circumstances Nadir holds tight to that information and wants to tell her she’s proud of her. After all said awful circumstances are over, of course.

“So how are we doing this?” Dimara asks.

“Just let me deal with it,” Tanis says. “Don’t intervene unless there’s another option. And you can untie his hands.”

Blair mutters something under his breath while everyone else shares an incredulous look, and then leans down to grab his hands where they’re still joined together behind his back. The rope all but disintegrates, but for a long moment Rooke doesn’t move. He stays kneeling on the pavement, corralled by them all, until he finally lifts his head up. He gets one foot under himself, and then two, wobbling slightly.

He turns towards Tanis, a crooked smile on his face. “This is gonna take more energy than you think, you know. What makes you think you can do it?”

“Yer laz shapas yatholat zhille kasha.”

“Excuse me,” Celia mutters.

“Was that Latin?” Vance asks, and she shakes her head slowly.

“If that’s Latin you have full permission to slap me later.”

Whatever just came out of Tanis’ mouth, though, Rooke understands. Or at least the demon does. He doesn’t look concerned but neither does Tanis. Not really. They look like they’ve come to a meeting place, an armistice in the middle of all of this.

“So now we’re speaking my language,” he says. “Tat yer nersa rek's elat tat rhellaya?”

“This is terrible,” Rory says flatly, and she’s inclined to agree. This has to be a part of it, no doubt, but that doesn’t mean Nadir has to like it. It’s like they’re speaking in code and she doesn’t have a hope in hell to figure out what they’re saying, or discussing.

“Yer hash elat tat vacazon,” Tanis says, and he lets out a little chuckle. She really doesn’t like his hands being free and swinging, not this close.

“Anha zin?” he responds, eyebrows raising. “Haji yer ast ma?”

He takes a step forward, only one, but almost everyone reacts. No one even gets the chance to get between them before Tanis has a hand up, palm raised towards him. Almost like she was about to tell him to stop, and miraculously he does. He halts in his tracks as if frozen in place, two feet away from her.

“You touch me, you’re leaving even quicker than we both thought,” Tanis announces, and Nadir has never been so glad to hear plain old English words come out of her mouth.

He’s testing his boundaries, though. Tanis begins to lower her palm and he wiggles his arms out, as if stretching towards her. Tanis can hurt him, that much is true, but she didn’t want it to get to that point. There’s enough of them here that it shouldn’t have to.

The crooked smile disappears, replaced by something that’s almost worse. It’s leering, like he knows exactly what’s about to happen before any of them do. He probably does. “Anha tikh takveri rek ven jin challen.”

Nadir doesn’t have to speak whatever language that is to not hear the word _challenge _lingering in his voice, just before he launches his hand out for her arm—

And crumples to the ground at her feet, like someone tossed him to his knees. He almost doesn’t catch himself on his hands either, an inch before his face were to hit the ground. His teeth grind together, almost in pain, and she can almost hear the grating noise. His whole body is quivering, shaking like the temperature has dropped.

She looks up to see Tanis still standing over him, just as strong as before, but now there’s a steady line of blood trickling from her nose, an out of control nosebleed two seconds after it started.

“Is that bad?” Vance asks, quite obviously.

“That’s happened to some of the younger ones in the Colony,” Kelsea says quietly. “When they over-exert themselves, use too much magic, it starts taking a toll on the body.”

“Tanis,” she warns, and she gets waved off in response. Is there a point to this, if they lose Tanis over it? What fucking point is there?”

Rooke hands clench deeper into the ground, looking for purchase. “You really—”

“Anha ast elat,” Tanis says.

“This isn’t going to work,” he says, slower. “You don’t have the _strength_.”

He shoots up, backwards. Not towards Tanis, where everyone expected him to go, but away from them. Towards the gap they’ve left facing the water, where the dock drops off suddenly into nothing but the waves lapping steadily below. Rory is the closest, the one who lunges after him and grabs him before he can throw himself over the edge. The two of them collide and it’s clear quickly that even up against a witch the demon is still stronger than something that has no real power on land. He’s on top of Rory in two seconds flat, struggling to keep him still. He’s still quivering like a leaf, like there’s an earthquake coming that only he can sense.

“No one touch him!” Rory yells, and Rooke scrabbles to get a hand around his throat, locking tight around the base of his neck. “If he’s— if he takes someone over let it be me. He won’t win down there. He knows he won’t.”

“Tanis,” she repeats. She can hear her muttering something under her breath, hear her saying more nonsense that won’t make sense. Rooke’s eyes are squeezed shut, the same way his hands are squeezing around Rory’s throat, but his shaking is only getting worse. The blood down Tanis’ face is too, dripping down her chin and soaking into the front of her shirt. Whatever she’s saying, it’s working as much as he tries to ignore it.

Rooke’s stronger, but he also has no real leverage. He’s weakening, convulsing, panting like he just ran a marathon. Rory is struggling for every breath he can get but she can only hope there’s no real danger there.

“Yer tat vo bellin voldrado,” Tanis says, and Nadir can’t ignore just how much blood is coming out of her. “Vo she jin khado, vo she jin rel. Jin tikh yeri nakhok ashekh sheh me. Yeri nakhok belfre.”

So many words, and so little meaning to anyone other than the two of them. One of his hands slips off of Rory’s throat, almost like someone dragged it off, but everyone’s still hovering a foot away. Waiting to drag him off if it gets worse.

It’s not. Nadir knows that.

She doesn’t think it can get any worse.

Tanis is shaking just as bad, and Nadir slides forward. Closer to her. There’s enough people here to deal with Rooke, more than enough. And much to her surprise Tanis reaches out to her, still focused on Rooke, but almost instinctively.

“I’ve got you,” she says, as Tanis’ hand clutches at her arm. “I’ve got you, just take it easy.”

Tanis nods and takes a deep, shuddering breath. Nadir watches the blood catch in her mouth, sees her swallow.

“Yatholat.”

Rooke jerks up like someone has him on puppet strings, like someone finally stepped in to drag him off. He hits the ground almost in his previous spot once again and Rory finally sucks in a wheezing breath, before Celia yanks him even further away.

Rooke is almost convulsing, now, and she feels Tanis shudder all the way down her arm. She tightens her grip, because trying to keep one eye on the both of them is almost impossible. She feels sick watching it, even more sick when she knows how hard it’s going to be to get rid of these images. They’re never going to leave.

He sways to his feet. Nadir knows, somehow, that if he bled like a normal person he’d match Tanis right now. It’s almost as if his eyes are starting to white out, like clouds passing over the every-day blue of the sky.

“Anha vazhak yeraan thirat,” Tanis says. “Vosma disse rek. Ajjin.”

That almost feels like an ending to this. Almost. Rooke takes a quaking step forward, knees knocking together, and reaches out a hand. Tanis regards it with eyes that are almost terrifyingly blank, matching just how quickly Rooke’s are going.

“Qafat,” he says, almost pleading and she strains to hear him.

She can hear Tanis’ blood hitting the ground at their feet, hear her own heartbeat in her throat. Celia’s hand clutching at the fabric of Rory’s jacket, Blair shuffling his feet just behind her. She feels like she can hear everything.

“Avvos,” Tanis says, and her knees give out.

Nadir almost doesn’t manage to catch her. She has her arms around Tanis a second before her knees crash into the ground but the two of them end up on the ground anyway. She hears a similar thump behind her, and a quick glance reveals Rooke in almost the same state. Face down on the ground, knife twisted awkwardly to the side as it digs into the pavement.

Everyone’s backed up, closer to them. He’s still, limp like the plug was just pulled.

“Let me go,” Tanis croaks, and fights her way out of Nadir’s arms. “Let me go, let me go.”

If Rooke wasn’t moving, there’s no way she’d ever let go of her again. Tanis goes crawling closer to him, smearing through her own blood on the ground. Nadir doesn’t know whether it’s how weak she’s become or just general hesitance, in what stops her for reaching out from him. She finds herself holding her breath regardless, feeling as taut as a bowstring. Every breath hurts. She wishes she didn’t know how Rory felt.

“Rooke?” Tanis asks shakily and her fingers just barely skim over the top of his ankle. His body jerks back to life with a sudden inhale of breath he won’t ever need and Nadir grabs the back of her shirt, pulling her back a few inches. Even then she still fights it, refusing to come back fully to the rest of them. Nadir wants to say the stream of blood from her nose is slowing, but she doesn’t want to be so optimistic.

“Rooke,” she repeats, and this time his name sounds suspiciously like a prayer. She’s sure that’s how any of them would say it.

Slowly, inch by inch, he pulls one arm out from under himself. He begins to push himself back up onto his knees and Tanis does the same, despite the hold that’s trying to pull her back. He’s facing the other way, still swaying in the still air. She knows what he’s doing before his hand even gets there – it closes around the hilt of the knife, twisting and turning, until the blade comes free of his stomach. It lands with a clatter on the pavement, skittering away a foot or so. His body is oddly still compared to the convulsions they had been watching only a few minutes ago.

Nadir almost wishes she wasn’t so close. That she was anywhere but right here, really, but she refuses to let go of Tanis. Just in case.

He starts to turn, and the light of the moon reflects off the glassy surface of his eyes. Clear, perfect blue. Nothing dangerous to be seen except for the way they’re rapidly filling up with tears that can’t be anything but the real thing.

He looks at them, one by one. Locks eyes on every single one of their faces like he’s trying to figure out exactly what happens, until the realization begins to dawn. He looks down at Tanis, lip quivering. Finally a few tears spill out, rolling over his cheeks until they splash and mingle with the blood that’s already pooling on the ground.

“Tanis,” he whispers.

“Rooke,” she answers, and he disappears.

—

—

—

Dimara’s less and less concerned by the fact that she wishes she were dead, at least once a week.

It would be simpler that way.

It would probably be easier for them all, if she's being realistic, to just be six feet under. Let the earth take them back because nothing ever happens down there, not unless someone is trying something absolutely ridiculous.

She thinks, _knows_, that everyone else is thinking that exact same thing. At first she thought that the deathly silence in the van was because everyone was asleep, but it appears that everyone is just avoiding conversation. Almost everyone is staring blankly in one direction or another, all except for Tanis, the only one actually asleep. She's been that way since Blair all but peeled her off of the shipyard's grounds and carried her back to the car.

Her nose bleeding was one thing, her knees giving out another, and even Dimara knows that it was still worse than it really looked.

It's hard not to be jittery after seeing all of that, but she makes herself sit still and patient even when Kali pulls up in front of them. No one else moves a muscle. If it was Rooke they would have all leapt to their feet quicker than the eye could even see, out of the car before she even breathed a word.

She gets out of the car and shakes out her numb legs, wincing at the cold air. Rooke may be gone but it certainly feels like he's here.

"What happened?" Kali asks, sounding almost breathless. "Did you guys do it? Did it work?"

She takes a deep breath and then lets it out in the slowest exhale she can imagine. Kali reaches forward and takes her hands, squeezing around her knuckles. For once it does nothing to make her feel better.

"I have no idea," she answers.

"You have no idea?"

We think— we think it worked, but there's no telling. Tanis did it and Rooke disappeared. We have no idea. It looked like him and it reacted like he would, but…"

"But what?" she prompts.

"But I don't fucking know anymore, Kali," she whispers. "I don't know if it actually worked, and even if it did I don't _know _that he's even going to come back. Not after everything."

Kali gives her a shake, and Dimara wishes it were a bit more forceful. If that would right everything in her, she would accept it.

"Listen to me," she insists. "I don't know either. I certainly don't know Rooke. But it's been twelve hours. You realize that, right? Give it some time. This can't be easy for you, but it's not any easier for him. And if he cares about you all even a fraction of the amount you care about him, then he'll come back."

"You manage to make everything sound like poetry."

"Easy when you're looking at it."

"Corny."

"_True_," Kali laughs lightly, holding her arms out. "C'mere."

Kali has no idea. She still doesn't, and Dimara doesn't know if she ever will. The only thing that feels like a certainty is the strong, reassuring grasp of her arms wrapped around Dimara's back, tethering her to the idea that everything will be okay.

"Do you need anything?" Kali asks into her shoulder. "Anything at all?"

Dimara doesn't really know the answer to that, except that she wants Kali's arms around her. She doesn't need it, she's survived without it, but for once she'd like to be selfish and have them transport her somewhere else.

So she doesn't answer, she's still not sure what to say, but she hears another door open. The sound of someone's shoes landing in the gravel alongside the road.

"Yeah," Tanis answers for her. "I need your car."

—

—

—

Tanis has to pry the keys out of Dimara's hands.

Kali seemed alright with giving them up to her, but no one else. It had seemed like they were about to form a protective barrier between the car and herself, a wall that would stop her from getting in.

She knows how to drive. Theoretically speaking. She's not great at it, but she knows what to do. What's concerning is how utterly exhausted she is. It feels like her own skull has been flipped inside out and left that way. She still feels sluggish and disoriented like the world is being tilted on its axis, like the little bit of leftover blood crusted into the collar of her shirt is the only real constant.

It takes a while, but she's forcing their hand. She can't stay another minute in that van with everyone watching her the way they are. Even sleep doesn't get rid of the feeling. She can't shift without someone asking her if she's okay, can't open her eyes without someone rushing to help her with something, even if there's nothing to do.

So she gets in Kali's car and slams the door shut. The unfamiliar silence is overwhelming.

There's nowhere to go. She almost turns off the highway in the direction of her parent's house, but thinks better of it. She hasn't seen them in weeks. Months, basically. They know she's alright, but not the real story; texting your parents the finer details of their on-going situation wouldn't end well for anyone involved.

The thing is, too, there’s no point to her doing this. If she wanted to get away from everyone she could sit on the side of the road for a while and make them all wait in the van, or even go for a walk. Something inside her wants to go far enough away that things seem peaceful, if only for a little while.

Unfortunately that’s not the feeling she seems to be obtaining. Alone the crushing pressure, the realization – it all seems to be worse. The magnitude of what she did, maybe, is really starting to sink in. Rooke’s out there somewhere, or not, because he chose to disappear on them. When he had looked her in the eyes there was agony there. Not from the knife, not from the exorcism itself, but from the feeling of being present. Of knowing that it was him standing there, finally, but all the things in the past had still been done at his hand.

She used to like being alone. She doesn’t really like being alone anymore.

She’s already shaky, already clutching at the wheel to keep herself focused, but it’s not working. Anyone would know it, as much as she’s already trying to deny it. There’s no keeping it at bay.

She’s still terrified. She thought doing it, or at least the possibility, would fix that.

Everything around her is empty when she jerks the wheel too hard, rolling onto the shoulder. The gravel rolls and pings against the underside of the car, still moving when she tugs the keys out of the ignition and tosses them somewhere in the vicinity of the passenger seat. She needs to go and she needs to stop, simultaneously. Most important she needs to _breathe_. She clutches tighter at the wheel and rests her forehead against it. In and out, in an out. Hold for a few seconds. Shaky exhale, shakier than the rest of her.

There has to be something wrong with her. It’s over, probably. It should be a good thing.

Instead she just feels like she wants to cry.

“I can’t do this,” she says, to no one or nothing in particular. There’s no one around to hear.

And it’s like he hears her. Like he’s still listening to what she says, in control or not. Like her wish is his command, even if she wasn’t wishing for anything at all.

The temperature drops. She feels it in the goosebumps that prickle at her arms, in the hairs standing up at the back of her neck. Her shaking finally feels justified, but not from the cold. She looks up, and the sky is the same. No rain, no snow. No reason for it to suddenly feel like the dead of winter.

She sits up, painfully slow. Lifts her head off the steering wheel and leans back until she’s nestled back in her seat, where a bit of warmth still lingers. She can’t make her hands let go of the steering wheel, but she can make herself look.

Her eyes find the rearview mirror and lock on Rooke’s wavering form, hunched in the backseat. Staring right back at her.

She really can’t do this.

She flings open the door and stumbles out into the road. The last thing she sees of Rooke is him sitting bolt upright as she flees the car, catching herself against the hood and pushing herself a few paces away. She puts her hand over her face, inhales again. It feels like she’s swallowing shards of glass, like the air around her has crystallized. She can hear the sounds of oncoming traffic getting closer and closer, but can’t force herself to get any further away from. It’s either the road shaking, or her, and she doesn’t know which one is worse.

Easily the worst part is not knowing if she’d really care, if she stumbled out there.

But someone else clearly does. She expects it but also dreads it when arms lock around her waist and drag her further into the grass at the side of the road. A truck goes whizzing by, rusted red all over, and her skin burns with the wind.

She feels like the dam has broken and all the freezing water has come rushing out; she has no handle on her emotions, nothing strong enough to keep them back. Even the feeling of his arms isn’t enough to stop it, knowing that if it wasn’t him, he would have just let her walk out there.

“I can’t do this,” she repeats, voice thick with tears. He presses closer, as close as he can get, and tightens his arms. She doesn’t even know what it is that she can’t do. Exist after all of this, or maybe just get it together in general. She could just still be too exhausted, too weak, but she can no longer tell the difference.

She’s shaking her head before he can even ask what’s wrong, already warding the answer off.

“It’s me,” he says instead, considering his words. “I know— I know that might be hard to trust, but—”

“I know it's you,” she insists. “I can tell the difference now.”

She really can. She doesn’t know how, but it makes her feel worse for not noticing the difference in the first place. Of everyone she should’ve known.

“It got... really good at pretending,” he says thickly. “And now I feel like I don’t even know the difference. If it’s me or that thing inside me.”

“Don’t,” she begs, and turns around. As well as she can, anyway. “Don’t say that, it’s you.”

It’s probably a good thing her eyes are so blurry from gathered tears; she’s not sure getting a good look at his face would help her situation. From what she can tell he looks about the same as her. A little gaunt, tired with his eyes filled with tears, rimmed red at the edges. Appropriately haunted for once.

He probably doesn’t want to look at her any more than she wants to look at him.

She buries her face in his shoulder, the easiest solution, and he squeezes her again.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” she says again, muffled. “You don’t have to say it.”

“I do,” he claims. “I do. I’m sorry.”

She knew that. They all do, and no one was going to make him say it. She’d be saying sorry too, if her hands had done the things his hands had. She wraps her arms around his back, clutching at his sweater. She’s still freezing, but it doesn’t seem so bad now.

“I’m sorry for stabbing you.”

He doesn’t laugh, there’s no way, but she thinks his lips quirk up a bit. “Forgiven. If you’ll overlook the forcible kidnapping, starvation, torture, and general creepiness.”

She never blamed him for any of that either, but she finds herself nodding anyway. If he needs to know that he’s forgiven for that, then she can give that to him. It’s one of the only things she can do right now to improve their situation, considering she was about to willingly walk into oncoming traffic.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“No idea. Are you?”

He swallows, fingers flexing against her back. “Don’t ask me that yet.”

She figured as much. Like anyone would be okay, after all of this.

“One day,” she murmurs.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Just not now, ‘cause I’m more concerned by the fact that you’re freezing.”

“Well, who’s fault is that?” she grumbles. Hers, if she’s being perfectly honest. It’s not him that’s keeping her held here, but rather her lack of desire to move anywhere else warmer. She can handle freezing if she gets this in return, but apparently Rooke can’t. He walks her back to the car door and plops her inside, slamming the door so forcefully the whole car shakes. He appears beside her in the passenger seat a second later, dangling the keys in one hand. He plugs them back into the ignition and cranks the heat all the way up, glancing at her every so often.

She’s not sure why. For approval, maybe. She’s not the one that can disappear at will.

She curls back up in the same, cramming her knees up against the steering wheel, arms wrapped tight around her himself. She won’t miss being cold, but she’ll miss the feeling of him.

He lets her sit there in silence for a few minutes, letting the heat penetrate back into her skin. All the while he glances around; at every passing car, at every miniscule movement she makes no matter how small. Even with just her presence it’s clear he’s still on edge. It’ll take time for that to go away.

“Why are you out here?” he asks eventually.

“Same as you. Had to get away,” she answers. “Where’d you disappear to last night?”

“Nowhere,” he murmurs. “I just disappeared into nothing. It’s—”

“Easier that way?” she guesses, and he nods. She almost wishes she had that ability herself. Sometimes she wonders if she’d trade every other thing she could do to be able to escape, even just once.

“You should probably go back to the others,” he says. “It’s not safe out here anymore. Not on your own.”

“I’m not alone.”

He looks at her for a fleeting moment and then away, out the window.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she pleads. “Please don’t.”

“I don’t know if I can do this either,” he admits. “It’s not just magically fixed. I don’t know if I can look anyone in the eye anymore, or stand next to them if I’m afraid I’m going to hurt them.”

“_You _are not going to hurt them," she insists. “You know that, everyone else knows that. We just want you back. We don’t care about the state of things, because we _can _fix this. Not all magically but we have to start somewhere.”

Despite the heat she shivers again, and he continues to dutifully avoid her eyes, gazing out the window like he’s caught sight of something interesting.

“I’m not going back to them without you,” she says.

He looks at her then, eyes widening. “Tanis—”

“I’m serious,” she insists. “I don’t care how long I have to sit in this car. If you’re not coming back with me, then I’m not leaving.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

Tanis pulls up her phone, and quickly pulls up Nadir’s number. Tilted just enough in the right direction that Rooke’s wandering eyes land on what she’s typing out.

_Staying out for the night. Maybe longer. I promise I’m fine, everything’s okay. Just need to be by myself for a bit. Text you in the morning._

She sends it off before he can protest, and then shuts the damn thing off. Vance or Blair would probably be able to find her if someone gets really concerned, but hopefully they just listen. And hopefully Kali isn’t too mad about her car getting hijacked.

“You shouldn’t stay out here,” he says.

“Neither should you.”

He really can’t argue her on that one. Not after everything that’s happened.

“Well, what are we gonna do?” he asks.

She looks around. There’s nothing in sight except for fields and some trees, not that she has ambition to drive anywhere anyway. There’s no point.

“I’m gonna go to sleep,” she decides. Her eyelids haven’t stopped drooping since she left them, and she still feels vaguely sick. Rooke doesn’t say a word when she clambers into the backseat and flops down, wiggling into a comfortable position.

It’s not so cold anymore. She’s so exhausted she probably could sleep outside right now with very little effort.

“Are you just gonna sit there all night?” she mumbles into the seat.

“You told me I couldn’t go anywhere.”

She shuffles all the way to the back of the seat, until there’s nowhere else to go. Her eyes are firmly closed by that point, not opening unless the gates of hell rose up right in front of the car. She hears the odd squeak as he moves to crawl into the backseat alongside her, settling down on the few inches of space she’s left.

“Don’t fall.”

“Is that why you’re making me lay on the edge?”

“Exactly,” she murmurs, already yawning. He inches closer, no room left at all.

“I’m just gonna make you cold again.”

She shrugs. He has not the faintest clue of how little of a shit she possibly gives. She waits not-so patiently as she squirms and wiggles around, moving into a more comfortable spot. She hears the zipper come down and a second later something is draped over her. She knows exactly what but cracks her eyes open anyway. She can’t see much, not close as he is. Not much except for the edge of his face and the bruises all the way around his neck, the pale skin of his exposed arms now that she has the sweater over her.

“You look weird without a sweater on,” she mutters, and closes her eyes again, pulling the sweater tighter around her shoulders in the same beat. She can already feel it warming up the closer it is to her skin.

“So I’ve been told.”

He puts an arm over her. She doesn’t know whether it’s because he doesn’t want to risk falling, or because he just wants to.

But it’s like she said – she really couldn’t care less.

—

—

—

Waking is not as cold as you’d think.

She’s very smushed and cramped, and one of her feet is asleep, but she’s not terribly cold. It’s a good thing, because late September was started to look a lot more frigid than she remembered it being in years previous. The window isn’t frosted over and the sun is clear and blue, at least what little of it she can see.

Rooke is keeping her pretty well-pinned against the back of her seat but that doesn’t stop her from wiggling her toes no matter how futile it may seem. She brushes up against his feet and he nudges her back, gently. He’s not asleep, was never going to be, but it doesn’t appear he’s moved much either.

It’s incredible how warm a sweater can be, regardless of the freezing body pressed up against her.

“I’ll come back with you,” Rooke says quietly. She cranes her head up, neck and shoulders cracking in the deathly silence. He looks back down at her with a rather grim smile on his face, hardly quirked up at all.

“You sure?” she murmurs.

It takes him a long moment of hesitation and she watches him fight his way through it to the other side before he nods, releasing a deep breath alongside it. When she smiles it doesn’t seem as despondent as his, as grim as she knows she should feel. It feels more optimistic than anything, and she’s sure she’s dead on when the look on Rooke’s face vanishes, replaced by something that almost seems hopeful.

“Well then,” she announces, fighting to sit up. “Let’s go.”

—

—

—

Rooke never thought a dead thing would have to spend so much time concentrating on breathing.

It’s keeping him from panicking, though. From choosing flight over fight and disappearing before Tanis can tell him not to. It would be so easy to slip away. She wouldn’t be able to stop him from going anywhere.

But he can’t deny the little bloom of happiness he feels when she scrambles rather excitedly back into the front seat, tossing his sweater back into his arms and starting the car a second later. He makes his way back to his seat more slowly, letting her read the presumable story Nadir sent her over text last night. She types something out with a slight quirk to her lips, something he watches with undeniable fascination. Curiosity.

She glances up at him after she pockets the phone. The smile disappears, but not the happiness from her eyes.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. It doesn’t rid the glimmer from the corner of her eyes. “You sure about this? No going back.”

“I’m not,” he admits. “So let’s go before I change my mind.”

She pulls off the shoulder rather quickly at that, but smiles at him again as soon as they’re on the road. He knows for a fact that she hasn’t smiled once like that in the past two months, mostly because of him. Not him. Like he said, it’s hard to tell the difference.

He rests his head against the window and lets his eyes slip shut again. It’s nice to feel like he can relax after everything. It was even nicer to see Tanis sleep for a solid fourteen hours after what he put her through, even if it’s currently eight in the morning. She looks better now, more alert. Not so drained that he had to stop her from walking out into the road.

He knows that she keeps glancing over at him, almost like she’s checking that he’s still there. One second, one silent disappearance, and he’s gone.

And he can’t do it to her, even if the thought of seeing the others is enough to make a lump rise in his throat, his chest.

But even that of all things is nice to feel. Rarely did the demon have any emotional that felt anything remotely familiar to him, except for the brief flashes of pain towards the end. There was even a hint of fear before it finally vacated his body, fear that for once in his life he was grateful to feel.

Of course that had all led to this, this feeling of dread that he had no real reason to free. He knew no one hated him, that they didn’t blame him. It was just hard to remember that after all he had done. It’s not even just Tanis. He got Blair killed, drove him to the brink of insanity. Nearly strangled Rory. Traumatized them all straight to literal hell even to the last second, all the blood dripping out of Tanis’ nose.

He opens his eyes. The trees are all starting to turn into fire, like the golden of a sunrise. He hasn’t seen the seasons change not through a window for seventy-two years.

It would take a lot, however, for him not to recognize this room. It’s virtually unchanged even from that many years ago. All the bends and curves are the same, twisting deeper and deeper into the trees until they land on a lone drive, the only one for a few miles.

“Tanis,” he starts, alarmed. She lifts her foot off the gas, starts to slow.

“Just trust me.”

“I don’t wanna go back there,” he says, clearly in a hurry. “I don’t want to see it again.”

“_Trust me_,” she insists. “Just close your eyes again.”

He does without squeezing, shutting them so tightly against the impending driveway that they ache. Tanis turns into the drive and reaches over for one of his hands, balled so tightly into a fist that he’s surprised his fingers didn’t start to crack into pieces.

These twists and turns are even more familiar. An opening in the trees there, a particularly tall maple that cranes over the road. He knows exactly where the trees end and where the meadow begins, where the sun shining over his face is able to be felt even in the car as it opens up.

Tanis is murmuring something under her breath, something he can’t make out no matter how much he strains to hear. She’s still holding onto his hand, the one thing that’s keeping him from coming apart at the seams.

He doesn’t know if he can look at it again. The first time he felt everything begin to unravel, strong enough that he had the chance to fight back. It felt like his entire world has just collapsed, everything he had known. The walls that had kept him safe for so long gone, just like that.

“Open your eyes,” she instructs. He can’t smell any traces of smoke.

So he does. And the house is lying there before him, like a picture on a postcard.

He loses any breath he had. Every single thing is perfect, unchanged. The charred meadow and the ash-covered driveway, the gray-black ruins of the house – all of that is gone. What sits in front of him now is everything he knew and committed to memory, the house he grew up in and lived in all his life and beyond it.

“Tanis,” he breathes.

“It’s called a glamour,” she explains. “It’s what the Fae colonies do to conceal their homes in the woods. It’s a magical barrier, like a forcefield I guess you could think of it as. Where Kelsea would see the place she grew up in a regular human walking through would only see the woods around them. Only people I want will see the truth, and everyone else will see what I want them to. Ruins. Nothing at all.”

“It’s _real_.”

“Of course it’s real,” she answers. “You really think we’d burn your house down without telling you first?”

Her smile should be enough to make him do the same, but all he can manage is to choke out a very horrific-sounding sob. Tanis lets go of his hand when he finally reaches for the door, stumbling gracelessly out onto the drive. He nearly collapses to his knees the second his feet touch the pavement, keeping his fingers locked tight around the door in order to keep himself upright.

Crying makes him feel human. Crying makes him feel alive, makes him feel like he has emotions even though he still has little control over them.

“I’m sorry,” Tanis says, getting out likewise. She rounds the car and grabs both of his arms, ignoring his hands pressed tight against his eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

He shakes his head, or at least close to it, and she wraps her arms around him. He leans into her willingly, almost afraid to look up. He’s afraid that if he opens his eyes the house will be gone all over again, like a trick of the light. He knows that Tanis wouldn’t lie to him like this, wouldn’t tell him something that’s not.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, an amused lilt to her voice. “Good tears?”

He’s not entirely sure but he nods anyway, just to make her feel better. If anything it’s just the combined hysteria of several long weeks resulting in this, in something he needed without knowing.

This is his truth – the only one he needs.

“I fucking knew it!” Blair yells.

He jolts at the sudden loud voice, but keeps his hands firmly where they are. Tanis turns, still holding onto him. Of course Blair would hear them; Blair probably wasn’t even asleep in the first place, none the wiser as to what was going on outside like everyone else no doubt is.

“Don’t make me peel your hands off your face,” Tanis tells him. He lowers them, knowing she’s not kidding, but still reluctant. He still looks around first. The house is still there. The meadow and the surrounding trees are untouched, still post-card perfect. And there’s Blair, maybe ten feet away. Rooke isn’t necessarily surprised to see him so close already, but goes still at the sight of him regardless. Vampires just have that effect no matter what the circumstance may be.

“I knew when you wouldn’t come back that you were pulling something,” he continues. “Rory told me I was full of shit.”

“Pretty sure that’s not what he said,” Tanis says.

“He said it a lot nicer.” Blair shrugs, and then stops. There’s only a few feet between them at most. Of course with the house comes all of them, with Blair standing before him now. He knew that, deep down, but that hadn’t seemed like the biggest thing.

Now it does.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Blair says.

He swallows. “Like what?”

“Like you’re afraid I’m about to come over there and punch you in the head.”

He knows these next few seconds could be crucial to how the rest of this goes but can only think of one thing to say, no matter how stupid it sounds.

“I’ll be honest,” he says, with a slight croak. “I’ve looked at you like that since the second I met you.”

Tanis grins, jostling him a bit, and Blair rolls his eyes. This is what he’s resorted to – saying stupid, ridiculous things in order to make this a little bit better for himself. Or maybe it’s for them too, for the looks on their faces to not be quite so hopeless.

“Dude, just get over it and come here.”

Rooke’s sure getting over it isn’t exactly an option, not like this and so soon, but he can’t exactly protest. Blair will drag him over there the same way Tanis did that first night out of the house. He shuffles forward a bit, willing himself not to chicken out. He still winds up with his hands back over his face, unable to look him in the eye for more than a second.

He doesn’t know why, but he didn’t exactly imagine Blair as the type to ever hug him. If it ever happened he expected it to be awkward and stilted, but when it happens it just feels an awful lot like forgiveness. He knows if he opens to apologize Blair _will _let go with one arm to hit him, regardless of the peace they have going on right now.

“Alright, get over here,” Blair says, and one of his arms comes free of Rooke’s back to reach out for Tanis. “Fucked up guilt trio is gonna have one wicked solid hug and then we’re all gonna go inside and pretend this never happened.”

Again, not gonna happen, but Rooke still gets what he really means. After this moment, they look to the future. To a time where he’s not crying as Tanis wedges her way in against their sides, as arms close around him again.

“Also, we’re going inside before anyone else wakes up,” Blair informs them. “I want to see who we can get a really good reaction of.”

There’s a little _thwack_, presumably from Tanis’ reaching around and hitting him, but it forces a chuckle out of him. He can taste the salt of his own tears but he knows they’ve at least stopped for now. It won’t last long – Blair’s probably right, about everyone’s wild reactions. He’s really going to earn them today.

They’re going to be a mess. A beautiful, awkward mess, the same as they’ve all been since the very beginning, but at least there’s nothing bad that comes with that.

And if there’s nothing bad, then he can handle that.

—

—

—

Even hours later Rooke isn’t sure who he really got the best reaction from.

Dimara was the quickest, at least, like her ears were burning in sleep. She wandered downstairs not ten minutes after he sat down in the kitchen, watching Tanis wolf down cereal like no tomorrow. She was so clearly exhausted, so bleary-eyed that he had felt his heart clench, until he had realized she hadn’t even noticed his presence. She opens and shuts the fridge before she finally blinks herself awake. She looks at Tanis first, eyebrows knitting together, and her eyes fall on him. The jug of milk in her hands hits the floor with a tremendous thud and spills its contents all over her feet.

And he expected Kelsea to cry, there’s no doubt about that, but he didn’t expect it from anyone else. Dimara tromps through her spill of milk and wrestles him out of the chair he’s claimed, and she’s not quite crying but she looks close it.

He expected it from Kelsea, who stops in the kitchen with her hands over her face just like he had, crying almost instantly, but the others are what really get him. Not Celia and Nadir, who have clearly dealt with too much to ever bother with having tears in their eyes. Not Vance, who’s been through so much pain that something as trivial as crying doesn’t exist anymore. And not Rory, who still has the faintest shadow of fingerprints around his throat where his own hands dug in, searching for where death existed.

The only one that doesn’t seem to like him is the dog.

Little Bagel, as odd as it sounds, runs up to everyone that’s not him. Crying or not crying, the puppy doesn’t seem to care. But it won’t go anywhere near him. It won’t curl up by his feet or concede to be scratched behind the ears. He appears once the obvious tear-fest has stopped and doesn’t leave them alone for that.

Except for him.

Maybe the puppy knows something no one else does. Maybe it recognizes the feeling of evil that lingered in for so long and still distrusts it. There’s no way Kelsea’s lying – it’s distrustful of new things. Of new humans. But he’s not one, not anymore. Animals are said to have an intuition different than any person. They know when something’s right and wrong, and when to flee.

It’s stupid. Worse, it’s irrational, and his brain has leapt off the deep end. But that dog’s looking at him like it knows all of his secrets, like he knows what lives in his head now.

The thing is, Rooke had that thing in him for months. He had a second skin, a second voice, and the end it pictured in its head was Rooke’s end, too. He knew every detail of it, every shadow, every drop of blood and where it would land.

He knows what the end feels like.

And he can’t help but thinking, irrational as it may seem, that the dog knows that the feeling is still there.

—

—

—

“Do you need anything before I go to bed?”

This lot has never done well at trying to leave Rooke alone to have a moment of peace in his darkest times. They’ve been trying, though, and trying is all he can hope and ask for. He’s been alone for at least an hour, once everyone started trickling off to bed. To able to sit in his room, in his own bed, and breathe in the familiar air was a miracle.

He looks at Dimara, lurking in the doorway. “I’m good.”

“Okay,” she says, and regardless of the issue she wants to push she must keep it to herself. “If you need anything you know where to find me.”

“Three doors down the hall to the right,” he answers, and she nods, satisfied.

“Missed you, loser,” she tells him, before she clicks the door shut. Dimara code for _you put me through literal, actual hell but I still love you, don’t you worry_.

“Yeah, me too,” he mutters, once her footsteps have cleared off. He missed the feeling of self more than he thought possible.

He waits a few very long minutes until he rolls out of his own bed, sure that there’s no one else wandering around at this hour. It would be too easy to just appear downstairs the same way he’s done a thousand times, but he doesn’t mind the feeling of the floor against his curled toes, the lip of the stairs that he often doesn’t bother walking down at all.

The wind is blowing strong, sending an odd sort of whistle and wheeze throughout the main floor. He knows all the best places to step down though, and he moves through the living room to the basement stairs silent, just like a ghost should.

All the people who would hear him are down here, but he’s hoping they’re asleep. He just wants to get in and get out, easy-peasy.

He couldn’t do this earlier. In fact, he hadn’t even remembered at the time because of all the emotions spilling out. It doesn’t matter, anyhow – there’s not a chance in hell he would have been able to look either Blair _or _Nadir in the eyes and do it. He had just worked up the courage to look up in the eyes again during a rather normal time. This was a different sort of territory, something he wasn’t willing to work for yet.

He creeps up to their shared door, praying for sleep. That, or at least the fact that they take mercy on him and stay put while he does what he came down here to do.

The necklace is still sitting nestled in the very bottom of his jeans pocket, its home for the past little while. His fingers close around the chain and hold tight, the way he wished he could’ve held onto it weeks ago. The demon had him convinced he was going to be pitching it off into the Atlantic whenever he finally saw fit to dispose of it.

He remembered that day in the mall with perfect clarity, striding back in like nothing had ever happened. Nobody had looked at him – them – oddly at all. The demon had a confidence in his body, had gotten used to it. No one had any reason to suspect that there was anything off. There was no flicker of his form, bruises hidden away. Only the woman behind the counter, who flinched when her hand brushed against his, still ice cold, had ever looked startled.

The words _clammy hands, sorry _had come out of his mouth, punctuated by a laugh fit for a patient, bumbling customer, and even though he hadn’t wanted to his hand still obediently took the bag offered to him, filled with a fixed necklace that didn’t belong to him.

He strokes his fingers through the chain, smoothing it out, and then loops it over their door handle. It clicks softly against the frame, swinging back and forth like a pendulum, and he reaches forward to stop it, the cross sliding gently against his palm. He lets it go and watches it fall still, waiting to be discovered in the morning.

It’s back where it belongs, and so is he.

Or at least his body is. His brain is still unsure, and even he doesn’t know where it’s at. It feels like it’s been split into a million little pieces, fractured apart. If he’s being honest, it feels like the demon took a few shards with it when it finally vacated. There are some parts missing, corners of his brain that feel dark when before at least there was the faintest bit of light.

He doesn’t want to feel like this forever, and while he knows deep down that he won’t, it’s hard to imagine feeling any better in the moment. He can already feel tears burning at his eyes again, a familiar feeling now, and pinches the bridges of his nose. He doesn’t want to cry again, but there may not be a better way.

There’s another sharp whine, the wind buffeting against the windows, and he closes his eyes. It’s already dark down here, nearly pitch black, but that still makes it easier.

He hears the whine again, even higher in pitch, and he swivels around.

Bagel is sitting at the foot of the steps, watching him. Not the wind at all, then. He whines again when Rooke looks at him.

“What?” he asks dumbly, voice shaky. The dog doesn’t respond, no surprise there, but tilts his head, ears flopping. His eyes are huge, reflecting the little light that exists, when he finally trots his way over. He stops at Rooke’s feet, staring up at an awkward angle, head crooked back to continue looking right at him.

He crouches down, carefully, but Bagel doesn’t flee. Rooke offers a hand that gets sniffed at quite furiously, surprised when the little thing holds its ground. He finally sits back, apparently satisfied, and looks back up at Rooke once again.

“I’m crazy, aren’t I?” he asks. “You have no idea what’s going on with me, you just don’t know who I am. That’s why you stayed away at first. You don’t think anything’s wrong with me. You don’t even know what a demon _is._”

It’s a dog. A tiny, four-legged creature staring up at him with all the innocence in the world, finally getting used to a stranger. It knows nothing of the darkness that was in his head a short while ago, and it never will.

It’s a relief to know that something in this world will never know that, even if just so happens to be a dog.

A dog who apparently has no issue with him anymore. All it took was a day.

If only everything was that easy.

He reaches forward to scoop him up, standing back up with Bagel tucked securely against his chest. “Do you just not like when your not-so humans are sad?”

He scrabbles frantically at his chest, tiny nails pricking against his skin, and stretches up to lick his chin. It lands more on his cheek instead, where he’s surprised to find no tears have fallen. He remembers begging his father for a dog when he was younger, him and Beckett and Ilara, to no avail. It was like it fell on deaf ears.

Bagel tucks his head along his shoulder, nestling in. Rooke is going to assume that’s it, that he has an attachment to the odd occupants of this house and doesn’t like seeing them sad any more than they’d like seeing him the same way.

The necklace is still hanging still against the door. He’s happy with it.

“Alright,” he murmurs, clutching onto him tighter. “Let’s go, then.”

Bagel makes a small noise, almost like a content little sigh, as Rooke heads for the stairs. It’s late. It’s time to settle in, to a home he knows he will always have now, to a place where he was always meant to come back.

“You like it here?” he asks. He feels no less stupid for asking a dog questions, but more human for it. He glances down at his shoulder and Bagel’s eyes are already closed to slits, just the right amount of warmth nuzzling into Rooke’s chest. Finally something, or someone, that doesn’t have a dislike of how cold he is.

The house seems quieter when he heads back off. Like the moment of silence immediately after the television is turned off. The trees are still blowing fiercely outside, bending in the wind, but that doesn’t seem so terrible when he thought they were nearly gone.

He still can’t get over looking around the house, taking it all in. He never thought he’d lay eyes on it again.

He stops at the door to his room, looking out over the railing to the rest of the house. He has a feeling he’s going to be doing that a lot now, getting one last glimpse before he closes himself away for the night.

He thinks that will help – reminding him of what’s still here.

It’s a starting point. And everyone needs one.

—

—

—

Daybreak comes with a still house, with nine sleeping people, not humans, and one dog.

And they’ll find Rooke in that dawn not quite asleep but peaceful, the aforementioned perfect little dog curled up against his chest, and for one morning everything is alright.


End file.
